Give this to S&T, and what appears to be its Only Living Designer, Joe Miranda: they sure are willing to tackle subjects no one has gone near in decades. Or ever. S&T #184's Twilight's Last Gleaming features three battles from the War of 1812, not exactly on every gamer's A-List: Bladenburg, North Point and New Orleans. The first two were fought near Washington DC and Baltimore; the latter was fought down south, after peace had been declared and they had found a nice wig for Charlton Heston. The three battles each have their own mini-map, done nicely by Joe Youst. New Orleans takes up half the map sheet, the other two battles split the rest. Alas, the turn track is missing. [Ed. It's in the Tobruk Triangle.] Beth Queman's counters are really nice, depicting regimental-sized units with infantrymen icons, all rated for strength, movement and morale. Named leaders provide a couple levels of command, and artillery is depicted in batteries by gun size (although the 32"ers are not listed on the combat table). The games use an alternating move - defensive fire - offensive fire - rally mechanic, with a nice initiative system that occasionally allows a player to move twice in a row. Fire is by strength, modified by range, resulting in point losses and morale checks. Failed morale checks demoralize the combat unit and make it retreat. Melee is an attacker-defender odds system with losses and retreats. This is all very simple, time-honored stuff that depicts the linear fire and close tactics of the day pretty well. All that's missing is formations and modifiers for flanking attacks. The five pages of rules cover things pretty well with few questions. However, there appear to be some gaffes betwixt rules and counters regarding reinforcement turns… nothing really hurtful. Bladenburg is an interesting battle. American militia, with very bad morale, bars the way to Washington but quickly gets shoved aside. The better U.S. force is frozen (by an idiot rule depicting very dumb leadership) behind the third stream line, which would hurt if the British didn't have to come directly at them, as required by the victory conditions. As it is, the British have to fight through them to get major points exiting the map. If you win, you get to don your Sam Donaldson mask and burn Washington. North Point has a good US group meeting a good British group in a straight-up slugfest. Tactically the system gets interesting here, because the US doesn't have enough units to keep the British from extending and turning their line (regardless of the lack of flanking fire), so good 18th century regular tactics are in use, as is trying to anchor your flanks. Nice. Both Bladenburg and North Point have two problems. The first is that neither battle is discussed in the lead S&T article, and, second, replayability suffers because there is little room for maneuver and there is only a single exit point for the British. This means the battles will tend to play the same. New Orleans? Well, I set it up, looked at it and decided no thanks, I have better things to do. The actual situation is depicted well: Americans in entrenchments with lots of artillery, versus a British force that has to get over a canal, or through a swamp, just to face the entrenchments. Add to that an omission in the rules: they don't say where the British reinforcements come in. Result? You have a battle that shouldn't have been fought, and never will be on my game board. Overall: Nice system, two nice, slightly straitjacketed battles and one major nevermind. Not a bad outing for S&T. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #26 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com